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Windows 7 backup file management.

Question

One of my users with a lot of data is getting a backup drive full message. Does Windows 7 backup automatically manage deleting old backups so that new backups will fit on the drive? I am assuming this is the way it works because it only makes sense. I just need confirmation.

Answers

When you get the notification that backup drive is full, a pop up appears in system tray and takes you to Manage Space Wizard. If you have missed or disabled the pop ups you can also go to Manage Space wizard from Backup and Restore control panel.

From there you can free space on your backup disk by selecting which backups to delete and also configure how windows manage space occupied by system image backups.

All replies

When you get the notification that backup drive is full, a pop up appears in system tray and takes you to Manage Space Wizard. If you have missed or disabled the pop ups you can also go to Manage Space wizard from Backup and Restore control panel.

From there you can free space on your backup disk by selecting which backups to delete and also configure how windows manage space occupied by system image backups.

nehaaMSFT, you say that "we do not suspect backup drive to get full..."?

What a stupid, and ignorant statement! It assumes that you 1) know the maximum size of the backup drive(s), 2) you know the size of the original data being backed up, 3) you know the size of the increments of each successive backup, and 4) you know the frequency
of the backups and change of increments.

Once in a programing class (Algol and Lisp) at Syracuse University the professor asked a question of the class. A fellow classmate answered with the opening statement, "I assume..." That is when the professor cut her off with the infamous statement
as he wrote it out on the board, "When you ASSUME, you make an 'ASS' of 'U' and 'ME'".

You have, or Microsoft has, done just that with you, me, and the others using the Microsoft Backup system in good faith.

I am an independent software contract/developer. It doesn't take long for me to massage a multi-gigabyte file, a serious of them, on a daily basis such that I am seeing increments of 90 gig or more. I backup up the system once a day (in the evening when
not programming).

In the short span of one (1) month I have filled to capacity a terabyte drive. A good software backup program would have the option to overwrite old files, delete files after a particular age, or keep all data. What you have done is say that we do not have
the option, and you know better.

Sorry, you are mistaken. And experience has taught that if I have the problem, so do others (and not a few.)

I have very large files. These files change frequently. Only slightly. This results in large incremental backups that fills up the backup drive. Microsoft's solution is that I keep manually deleting them?

This is the sort of thing that makes people want to take a baseball bat to their computers.

In my opinion the backup tool in Windows 7 is about the worst designed software in that OS. It makes the ancient ntbackup tool look very powerful and advanced.

I ran into the same shortcomings of Windows 7 backup after migrating. My situation: I want to backup only files and settings to a network drive where I have a couple of GB's assigned. This backup should run daily, e.g. at noon. Because the major part of
the backup is consumed by Outlook PST files (about 1GB) that change daily, I get a "backup drive full" message after 3 days.

I created this workaround, that deletes old backup files just before a new backup is started, using a batchfile:

Open Notepad and enter the following line:
RD /Q /S <DRIVELETTER>:\<BACKUPFOLDER>
where <DRIVELETTER> and <BACKUPFOLDER> are the settings you entered in Windows backup (e.g. H:\backup)

save this file in a suitable folder with the extension .BAT, e.g. as D:\documents\Del_Old_Backups.BAT

Go to Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Task Scheduler

On the menu bar, select Action - Create Basic Task

Chose a name, e.g. Daily delete backup files, then click [Next]

Select trigger frequency (daily, weekly,...), then click [Next]

Adjust start date and time. In my case, I entered a time 2 minutes before the backup is started (11:58 AM). Click [Next]

Click [Next] (leave the "Start a program" bullet unaffected)

Click [Browse], and point to the batch file you created in the second step. Click [Next], [Finish]

I agree that this workaround can hardly be called "solution" because it will not be waterproof for all users. Reason it is for me, is that our network drive is backed up every night (using - I presume- a more sophisticated backup tool). So even if my harddisk
would crash in the 2 minutes between deleting the old backup and creating the new one, my files are safely stored on tape somewhere.
Now you may wonder: why don't you just save your files directly on the network drive if this is already backed up automatically? Well, even though our network is pretty reliable, it can be sluggish every now and then. So I'm still a believer in local
storage.

I haven't known this until today, I have been using windows 7 for a year or more. I thought the system is backing up correctly. I have never expected such an idiotic "by design" backup system. only today I was checking the space on one hard 500GB
I thought it was full because of recorded TV shows, but I noticed they are only 140GB. the rest are backups. managing backups require me to delete old files one by one. what the hell? the designers must be idiots or simply a bug you
don't want to acknowledge, rather you resort to the claim that this is a feature for our "own good".

We pay a lot for Microsoft Windows that we soon will have to upgrade and buy the new one. you have to develop the ability to listen to us and correct such incomplete and idiotic features. an automatic backup system by design should be able to
manage space, to keep the backups fresh. what's the benefit if I gonna have full backup so old because your system so stupid to delete old data and make new ones? Add options that allow us to choose between your "system" and standard auto-backup
system. I believe it's not difficult. when you say windows include auto backup system, then that backup system not works as it should, that's a deceptive practice. This is like selling an operating system that can't manage the memory
on its own.

Your assumption that backup drive won't be full is so crazy . have you not expected we gonna use Windows 7 for more than a month or what? it's incremental like you said, means it will increase over time eventually will get full. then I have delete
20 backups? I only have 5 backup files and old full image backup . glad I didn't need those backups yet. so stupid

I agree with everyone's disapproval of Windows Backup because of this ridiculous oversight in not having a feature for the automatic deletion of old backups or even letting users delete more than one backup period at one time!

This is a really old issue, to be sure. Most of us have moved on to other backup programs because of this shortfall in Windows 7. I just wanted to say that, as a generally helpful person, troubleshooting silly issues like these for friends and family are
what make helpful people reaaaaally annoyed. I've helped tons of people fix tons of windows problems with TeamViewer and this one takes the cake for the most repetitive and time-consuming. I can't teach my grand parents the series of 7 clicks to delete old
backups, so I have to do it myself. Every month or so. Plus 3 other family friends. Every month! Probably 4 to 5 hours of my life is gone every month finding and deleting and waiting for old backups to delete. And I'm a computer nobody. I can only image how
this must feel for people who actually have to manage many computers using this software.

The other problem with the Windows backup is it also needs to have the ability to use the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th day of the week and NOT to just pick a random day 1 through 31 to run backups. If you manually edit the backup task you can select these
options which I thought was nice but if you go back and look at the backup from Backup and Restore you will see that Windows now thinks the backup is not setup. The backup will still run that way but if you want the user to have the ability to to restore
their own files they can't unless they know how to set the backup routine up again. The ability to set ANY and ALL options should be available and not limited especially when you are running the enterprise version. You pay more for the higher end
versions hoping you have more functionality but it is the fine details that make it more useable and we are not getting that.

In the end you you have to jump through hoops to delete old backups because there is no option to remove backups older than xx days or to be able to set your backup to run on the 4th Thursday of the month.

Like Portlander above, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I found this thread "alive and kicking" after 4 years. I too have stuggled all this time to master Windows 7 backup and still haven't succeeded! I have managed to back up what I believe to be
the essential for the past year or so (data files mainly) albeit through playing with the settings as the default Windows settings just don't work for me (believe me I've tried everything).

So, content with my weekly back-ups which Windows reported were "effected correctly" for a year (I'm working with the French Windows so some of my message interpretations in English may not be exact).

Anyway, decided recently to give the computer a complete overhaul - delete all unused programmes, clean out unwanted files etc. I didn't want to go a complete re-install for obvious reasons, and I accept that my (Acer Aspire 9920G) computer is a bit long
in the tooth, but nevertheless does what I need.

First problem - I find I've got 57,000 (yes that's right) temporary internet files hidden in System Volume Information. Only by working with Foldersizes (v6) (a really neat appli which I might even buy when the 15 days free trial is up) did I get to see
and get rid of this crap. So I came to my backups and particularly the System Image Restore Points discussed in this thread. These went back to 2009 so I just wanted to get rid of all the old ones and only retain the most recent. Believe me I tried everything
(disable restore and reboot etc. etc.) which I've found on the many forums dedicated to the suject with no success. Finally I decided to format the hard disk I'm using to back up. Well, that worked for all the System Image Restore Points created automatically
when backing up to that physical drive which miraculously disappeared. BUT I'd used another physical drive from 2009 to 2011 and those System Image Restore Points still appear in:

Worse still, when I click on Look for Programmes" on the earliest restore point (2009) I find that Windows could try to reinstall all the crap I've cleaned out and ignore all the programmes I've installed since. And I can't see how to get rid of all these
early restore points.

Anyway, moral of the story (sorry it's been a bit long).

My computer mag tells be that Cobian Backup is a good free alternative to the Windows 7 appli. I'm going to disable the Windows backup and go that route when I've finished this post.

I've been with Windows (and MS Office) all my PC life and was quite looking forward to trying Windows 8 and get a new touch-screen computer in the New Year when Windows 8 (Pro or whatever not RT) is available. Now most likely I'll just go Android. I really
do think that Microsoft has lost the plot.

Fully agree. I had to go and spend $44.00 for Macrium Reflect to get the features that should be present in MS Backup. In Macrium, I can set a limit to the number of backup sets to be retained, and the program will purge the oldest set whenever I run a full
backup (I do this weekly). This purges the last full backup and all associated incremental backups, thereby keeping my disk space at a fair constant level.

There is probably a cheaper program that does this - have to look around, but Macrium is feature rich.

They also have a free edition, but this only supports disk imaging, not file backups.

I just deleted a whole set of backups in seconds because my disc was showing 'full': I used Windows Explorer, found the backup folder (USER-PC with a disc backup icon) to select and delete multiple folders then emptied the Bin (Trash?). When
I clicked first time it said I didn't have access permission, but pressing 'Continue' allowed me access. The same happened with deleting the backup folders. Hope this helps.

We appreciate your feedback. But as our backup is incremental and backs up only changed files after first run, we do not suspect backup drive to get full every now and then.

Thanks

Neha

Wow. "we do not suspect backup drive to get full every now and then."

I cannot believe you would make such an ignorant assumption. You have no idea about how large our backups are, how often we perform backups, how large our backup storage is, or how often we make modifications to our files.

Your reply was not only unhelpful, but really showed the pure ignorance of Microsoft with this matter.

Sorry if this reply sounds harsh, but you could not have been anymore incorrect with your statement.

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